


Salvaging Surrender

by Boji



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Originally Posted on LiveJournal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-30
Updated: 2006-10-30
Packaged: 2017-10-11 15:18:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/113816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boji/pseuds/Boji
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Voyeurism is a team sport; it doesn't have to lead to sex.</p><p>Set after <em>Torchwood Episode 2 - Day One</em>. <br/>Jack Harkness, but from the Team!TW's  perspective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Salvaging Surrender

**Salvaging Surrender**

  
"Morning," Gwen called out, as she carefully stepped down the metallic stairs into the hub.

"Morning." A chorus of two voices replied - Toshiko and Owen, though neither dark head turned away from the computer screen they were staring at.

"New case?" There was music flooding out quietly from the computer screen. "Jack around?" As Gwen asked, Toshiko moved her fingers briskly over the trackpad and the volume was lowered. "Interesting song that, sounds familiar it does," Gwen said.

"Sarah McLachlan. Canadian." As she paused to take a breath it was obvious Toshiko was gearing up to continue, no doubt ready to impart the singer's stats, biography and the listings of her entire back catalogue. Owen interrupted her before she could begin.

"It's the weekend footage. Two days of Jack reading, pacing, drinking. And what's that about? Bottle stashed in the bottom drawer of his desk."

Shaking her head at Owen, Toshiko turned to look at Gwen. "I was just about to make coffee," she said. "Interested?"

Gwen's reply was little more than an enthusiastic nod as she moved to get a clear view of the monitor. The footage - leached and secret - was riveting, despite Jack's near total inaction.

Toshiko stood, squeezed past Owen, who refused to step back and give her more room to pass, then she headed off to the kitchen. She left Gwen and Owen watching the oddly lit footage in silence.

Words seemed trite, the looped recording fast-changing from interesting to compelling.

"Gives a whole new meaning to reality TV doesn't it?" Owen asked suddenly, the words almost tumbling over themselves, as if he couldn't bear to stay silent a moment longer.

Gwen's mind was still scrambling for a reply when footsteps announced Toshiko's quick return. At least that was what Gwen assumed, until Ianto spoke.

"He'll be livid. Invasion of privacy, that's what that is," he said.

"You planning to dob us in?" Gwen asked, feeling that, suddenly, they were barely a half-step from school and the blunders that her adolescence had been chock full of."

"Don't ask don't tell, it's the team motto. Unofficially. We don't ask Jack and he doesn't tell us," Owen said his tone part cutting, part amused.

"Well I don't know about you lot but I'm going to get that bottle," Gwen said. She stalked past Toshiko who was walking back to her work-station two mugs of coffee in her careful hands. Toshiko froze as Gwen's wake startled her and the coffee sloshed fragrantly against the inside of curved porcelain.

"Where's she off to?" she asked.

"Jack's office," Owen replied. He settled himself in Toshiko's chair, spun round a few times, then reached out to take one of the two mugs Toshiko was carrying.

"That's Gwen's" she protested, but by the time she'd spoken he'd put the mug rim to his lips and taken a gulp."

"Oh, thanks a bunch Owen!" Gwen exclaimed as she walked back to Toshiko's workstation a bottle held in one hand. Grabbing the coffee out of Owen's hand, Gwen ignored his 'hey' of exclamation, turned the mug around and took a sip. She slapped the bottle into Owen's now empty hand. "Run that through some fancy test or other."

Owen stared at the transparent glass."It's green."

"Yeah smarty-pants. So?"

He uncapped the bottle and sniffed delicately. "It's alcohol, and it's green. What do you think it is?"

"What?" Gwen asked staring into Owen's exasperated face.

"What else was in that drawer?" he asked.

"Else? Oh, um a linen napkin, a cocktail glass, pretty, and a spoon. Ornate silver thing."

"That's Absinthe?" Toshiko asked, moving closer to the evidence.

"If we're guessing I'd say it's a dead cert. Footage from the camera pointing at Jack's desk can't be boosted?" Owen asked.

"Earlier on, he's sitting on the floor, leaning against the desk with his legs on his desk chair. I can't make out much."

"Pretty obvious he's taking the scenic route to getting blasted, wormwood and all." Owen said, twisting the bottle cap back onto the thin glass neck.

"Wormwood's a poison!" Gwen exclaimed.

"Mixed right it's a nice high though," Owen said. "Nice slow buzz and wakes you up almost like a hit of coke." He caught Gwen's glare. "Which I wouldn't know from personal experience mind..." She smiled.

They turned their attention back to the monitor again, watched Jack get up from behind his desk and walk a vigil-tour of the hub, cocktail glass held loosely in the fingers of his right hand.

The first lap round the hub, Jack slowed to glance at the hand in the jar that Gwen had almost demolished on her first day on the job. By the time they'd fast forwarded the recording to when he'd settled himself on the sofa - in what doubled as the lobby area and crash-out spot for the team - the hand was on the floor, level with Jack's eye-line. He half-sat, half-reclined on the sofa, sipping green sludge.

"What do we know about that..." Gwen asked.

"...Adams family reject?" Owen interjected. Gwen nodded as he continued," "Nothing."

"But Jack values it," Gwen said, stating the obvious.

As they spoke the figure on the flickering screen reached out his fingers brushing against the glass, fingertips resting, pressing against the pane of glass. Disembodied finger-tips moved in sympathy, under-glass.

"It's beyond value," Ianto said. "That's what he said, once. I never mentioned it again."

In the background, a woman's voice bled pain out in song lyrics and a blend of musical notes. "What she singing anyway?" Owen asked in irritation.

Ianto took up the verse and sung quietly: _"The life I've left behind me, Is a cold room  
I've crossed the last line, From where I can't return, Where every step I took in faith,  
Betrayed me, And led me from my home."_ He trailed off, as a woman's voice belted out the chorus singing words of sweet surrender.

They watched as, on screen, their boss lay on the couch, drew his legs up under him and curled one arm around himself. The other, extended was still touching the octagonal bell jar.  
They stood in silence watching him stare sightlessly at, they knew not what. It was Toshiko who first noticed his shoulders shake slightly.

"Is he? Is that?" She stuttered slightly.

"We shouldn't be watching this." Gwen said, as Jack turned his face into the fabric covered crook of his arm. With the volume boosted and filtered, it was easy to discern the sound of barely muffled sobs mixed in with poignant electro-pop.

"Right, so we gotta find the bloke that hand belongs to." Owen said, his voice a tad louder than it should have been.

"What?" Gwen and Toshiko were a choral ode of surprise.

"Owen waved a hand at the monitor. "That's grieving that is. Jack's grieving. Which means that, either we find the bloke or ..."

"Or..."Toshiko said quietly. "Ianto can you wash the glass and that spoon and put them back in the bottom drawer of Jack's desk?"

"Of course."

"How does he do it?" Gwen asked.

"Do what?" Owen looked genuinely puzzled, looking at Ianto's retreating back before turning once again to look at Gwen.

"Hide that amount of pain behind a cheeky grin and flirty lines." Toshiko leaned over him so that she could reach the keyboard, then fiddled briskly with her computer, one click freezing the image, the next closing down the window. "Mr innuendo riding in to save the day when..."  
Gwen waved a hand at the altered monitor, now mimicking a fish tank, then looked at it more closely. "Tosh, you changed the coding so that the fish look alien?"

"Well yes," Toshiko replied. "It was a slow day."

Gwen looked at Toshiko, then at Owen and Ianto. "We can't tell Jack that we know."

"Suspect," Owen butted in. "We know Jack-shit, pardon the pun."

"Still."

"Yeah, Mum's the word kiddies," Owen grinned. "But we're looking for what goes with that hand. Deal?"

They nodded. And as Owen extended his hand, three palms came down to rest on his knuckles. Three hands clutched in agreement.

"Should we say something?" Toshiko asked. "Something memorable or portentous."

Owen snorted.

Gwen looked down at their clasped fingers. It was a gesture she'd forgotten, one that belonged in playgrounds and at the back of the classroom. She wondered if rock, paper and scissors would determine who got to ask questions tiptoeing around Jack's shattered heart.

She smiled wistfully at Toshiko, "All for one and one for all, too corny for you?" she asked, smiling as Owen pulled his hand away stalked off to the kitchenette muttering about the invocation of Sod and Murphy.

"For Jack?" Gwen asked her remaining two team-mates, who nodded.

"For Jack."

**Author's Note:**

> Last Wednesday, over on a thread in [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/maygra/profile)[**maygra**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/maygra/)'s LJ, I offered up a three word fic-prompt. The words were: _Green, blasted &amp; innuendo._ Then I took the prompt myself and this is what I got. And yes, I'm hurting Jack again. The song quoted without permission is "Sweet Surrender" by Sarah McLachlan. I'm trying not to admit to myself that I committed song-fic.


End file.
